Ocasio-Cortez wants in on Brazil’s Amazon discussions

U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked Brazilian lawmakers on Monday to be included in future discussions about the climate crisis.

“And if I may be so bold as to ask for inclusion in any climate or planetary caucus that you all may want to establish, and have that be an international effort,” she requested, during a sitting of the Amazon and Indigenous Peoples Committee in the lower house of Brazilian Congress. 

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is visiting Brazil alongside four other Democratic House members, as well as Misty Rebik, chief of staff for Senator Bernie Sanders.

“Because we understand that the role of all of us, but particularly the U.S., is to ensure that we do a great honor to the justice owed to many of the communities that have been marginalized and harmed over the past several centuries,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez added.

Congresswoman Célia Xakriabá, the head of the committee, promptly replied: “Our caucus for the planet is already formed.” Ms. Xakriaba’s press office did not immediately reply to The Brazilian Report about how such a caucus will be organized.

Congressman Greg Casar added: “We are really here to listen and learn, and for this to be the beginning of a long conversation about how we can be in this struggle together.”

Speaking in Spanish, Mr. Casar then said that if the leaders support each other, as well as each other’s democracies and indigenous people, “we are all better off.”

“The media says a lot about the U.S. being solely a right-wing country, but we are here to teach that is not correct, and that we are here in solidarity with what you are trying to do.”

Congresswoman Nydia Velásquez said the delegation’s mission is to strengthen the U.S.-Brazil relationship, and added that there are currently 42 Latino lawmakers in Congress. “Our presence here is an indication that we are resolved to use the power we have, having 42 votes in Congress, to demand that the issues affecting Latin America are also issues discussed in the U.S. Congress,” Ms. Velásquez said.

Kleber Karipuna, the executive coordinator of Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB), requested help from the U.S. lawmakers in fighting against the so-called “time frame” argument for indigenous land demarcations, currently under discussion in both Brazil’s Supreme Court and Senate. The thesis, supported by Big Agro, seeks to define October 5, 1988 — the date on which the Brazilian Constitution was enacted — as the cut-off point for land rights. Indigenous groups oppose the idea because it excludes groups that were displaced from their land at the time of the constitutional convention. 

“We can talk later in more detail to better understand in which way the U.S. Congress can help our lawmakers and the indigenous movement in Brazil to wage the struggle against this upcoming trial in the Supreme Court (…) and also in the Senate,” Mr. Karipuna said.

Adriana Abdenur, a special advisor at President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s office, had a different message from the U.S. lawmakers. “When you strike at China, you hit Brazil. And you hit the other developing countries,” she said. Brazil’s policy on the Russia-Ukraine war has been publicly complimented by Russia and criticized by Ukraine and the U.S.

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